“Go where?”
“Up.” He nodded toward the grating. “All the way up.”
He’d send her to the stars if he could.
“I can’t leave you here.”
“It’ll only be for a little while. You have to go first. And even if I weren’t stuck, I might not be able to climb into the places you can.”
She sucked in a loud, deep breath, squared her shoulders, and blew it out. “I’m ready.”
Nate exhaled hard. No more crying. They had work to do.
“Do you have the tool?”
Pixel produced a small wrench from her boot—swiped as she’d tailed Agatha. It wasn’t much to work with, but it was better than nothing. Nate fought the urge to tug his wrists again and tilted his head, directing her attention to the still.
“It’ll slow her down if she gets distracted by the still being messed up. We don’t want to break it permanently—just make it hard to fix. If the bolts are too tight, skip them.”
“I’m strong.”
“You have to be strong enough to keep moving, Pix. Go!”
She darted for the still and climbed the rounded edge of a tank, gripping her boots against the thick bolts that circled it, connecting it to the tubes that ran toward the ceiling. There was one playground in all of the Withers, the only one that hadn’t been made of wood and scrapped in the winter. Kids still played on it. He’d taken Pixel to it a few times.
“Watch out for the hot pipes!”
“I know,” Pixel said. “I listened. This is the c-c-condenstated part.”
Climbing toward the ceiling, she wore the same look of determined joy she’d had on the decaying playground. Children in the Withers had to fight for this. Climbing. Falling. Swinging. Laughing. Every unfettered moment hard-won.
“Wait,” he said.
Juniper groaned where she sprawled across the chair, and he quieted.
“That part there. Can you get the bolts?”
“I think so.” Pixel crouched, straddling a wide pipe, and twisted the wrench. She stuck her tongue out and grimaced. “But this isn’t the right spot. If I do it over here, instead, it’ll make that part there fall, see? It’ll take her ages to fix it.”
He hadn’t considered it that way before, and she was right. “Yes! Keep going.”
“Almost. Got it!”
A bolt fell to the ground and rolled into the drain. She started on the next.
He’d planned on guiding her through dismantling the key elements of the still, but she was working too quickly for him to keep up. It was like watching a flame grow. She understood the machine without needing a word of instruction.
Agatha had tech and tools from Gathos City, but there was no way she could quickly repair the Diffuser. It would give Pixel time to run and give the gang time to get away, to hide themselves away from the Breakers.
Pixel’s foot slipped and kicked a glass tube that rang out like a low bell but didn’t crack. Fear knotted Nate’s shoulders.
If they broke it, that was something else entirely. Not an escape, but an end.
He didn’t know if he could do it—if he could kill that beautiful machine and his only chance to survive on the Remedy it distilled.
“Nate!” Pixel called out, shooting him an impatient glare. She’d already made her way higher, and another bolt fell and rolled. “Is it enough?”
“It’s perfect. You need to hurry now. Can you reach the grating?”
